Monday, March 26, 2012

A Tale of Two Chairs

I love vintage furniture. I have always had a fascination with mid century modern stuff, which is enjoying a resurgence right now. Of course this makes it look like I'm just one of the herd, when truth is I liked it well before it became fashionable (oh yes, hipster statement, and no I'm not a hipster LOL).

Due to the fashionability of it, mid-mod is PRICY. My family was never inclined towards mid-mod, but they bought good solid furniture that lasted forever and they never threw anything away.

Ergo, slowly I am rescuing pieces of not-really-mid-mod-but free and bringing them in to the 20th century. I decided I was tired of Ikea and what a treat it is to move to actual WOOD.

A while back, I needed a chair or two for our guest/craft/sitting room. All that Grandpa's house yielded was a couple of gold-and-venge tufted and caned um.."beauties". But the springs were good, the wood was solid, and most of the caning was in good shape.

I took one apart and made an enormous mess of my living room. I replaced the upholstery on the seat and on the back. I painted the chair and the caning with aqua blue. It hardly looks like the same chair anymore.

While I was working on that one, my daughter and my cat developed a fondness for the OTHER one, you know, the one that was still gold and venge and tufted and...euch. Miao lays in the little depression in the seat just like Grandma's little dog used to. I have not yet been able to refurbish it. And frankly, when I want to sit in one of them, I end up in that one too.

So right now they sit next to each other; a living "before and after". I'm not sure if I'm going to refurbish the second one or what I'll do to it. I'm considering painting it black and putting a black printed upholstery on it. Right now, I'm not doing anything.